


Street-Level Superheroes

by enchantedsleeper



Series: The Dumbest Love Story Ever [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, MJ and Foggy commiserate over having self-sacrificing idiot boyfriends, Not Daredevil Season 2 compliant, Spideydevil friendship, The joys and pitfalls of superhero relationships, Very slight background Ned Leeds/Betty Brant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-02-23 06:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13183977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enchantedsleeper/pseuds/enchantedsleeper
Summary: [Sequel to How to Be a Superhero Love Interest] While out one night in New York, MJ is saved by a man in a mask - not in itself unusual, except for the fact that she's not dating this one.Peter is affronted at not being the only masked idiot to save MJ's life - until he meets Daredevil, and the two start to get on like a house on fire. Or more like a trainwreck that crashed into a house on fire, then jumped out, bleeding, from a fourth-storey window, limped away and is insisting that it'sfine, MJ, honestly, it's just a scratch and some third-degree burns.Superheroes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, everyone! Welcome to the sequel to How to Be a Superhero Love Interest which I never planned and yet has somehow completely taken over my life. :D 
> 
> I accidentally fell into Daredevil fandom a few months ago (about two years late, as usual) and was still reading Spider-Man fics at the time, and somewhere along the way, I thought about the fact that Peter and Matt are both local to the New York area and would have run into each other (or they would if the Marvel movies and TV series ever crossed over, but these are the joys of fanfiction), and then I imagined Foggy and MJ becoming pals and commiserating with each other over their ridiculous boyfriends. Because I enjoyed writing How to Be a Superhero Love Interest so much, I decided to set it in the same 'verse, and thus a sequel was born :D
> 
> The phrase "street-level superhero" is a phrase I've read in one or two fanfics to refer to a local-area superhero like Matt or Peter, and it seemed like a pretty apt title for this piece.
> 
> Just like its predecessor, this fic started off as a fairly silly, light-hearted idea that wound up growing _way_ beyond my expectations, with all sorts of _plot_ and _character development_ , what is this?! I'm about two-thirds done with it (yes, I tried valiantly to resist posting it until the whole thing was finished, but I have very little willpower and also wanted to publish it before 2017 was out) and it's shaping up to be somewhere in the region of 30-40k. I'm hoping to manage a chapter-a-week posting schedule, so look out for Chapter 2 in about a week's time, Chapter 3 the week after that, and so on and so forth.
> 
> Unbeta'd, British English, please excuse any surprise Briticisms in places they really shouldn't be, etc. etc. Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 10/9/18: I've added a trigger warning to the end notes for this chapter, which I really should have put in from the start. (Sorry, guys). It's a little spoilery, but not overly so. Check it if you're concerned, and if you're uncomfortable, feel free to nope the fuck out of here. ;)

“A Hell’s Kitchen soup kitchen?” Michelle says doubtfully. “So like, a Hell’s Soup Kitchen?”

Betty Brant rolls her eyes, but there’s a slight smile tugging at her lips. “Yes, thank you, my parents make that joke a dozen times a week. Very funny. It is, in fact, a soup kitchen in Hell’s Kitchen, and I help out there every Friday night. It’s run out of one of the Catholic churches. But we’ve always been short-handed, and all the more so since Liz left. Last Friday, George - he’s the one of the guys who runs it - begged me to ask around at school for anyone else who might be interested in volunteering. And I thought of you.”

“You did?” Michelle asks. It comes out a little flat, but she’s surprised, really. She finds the idea of people having thoughts involving her a bit odd.

She’s managed to get her head around Peter and Ned being the exceptions to that rule, but apparently this ‘friends’ thing is contagious, and once you cross that line there’s no going back. Betty Brant now sits with their little group every other lunchtime, mostly to ‘help Ned study for English’ (yeah, right), but she also has no qualms about getting into a debate with Michelle over third-wave feminism or the works of Maya Angelou.

“Sure, why not? You’re one of the most civic-minded people I know,” Betty replies breezily. 

Peter looks between the two of them with a mild smile. It’s been three weeks since he and Michelle officially became a couple, and so far things are going... well. Michelle’s not one to jump the gun, but it’s nice. Peter makes time for her, he’s sweet and respectful and not pushy, and so far they haven’t had any big blowouts over the superhero thing. Peter’s Decathlon attendance record is near-perfect these days.

“Civic-minded,” Michelle repeats. “That’s a weird way of saying that I go to protests and get into fights with our Politics teacher over the Sokovia Accords.”

Betty shrugs. “It’s true, though. So, how about it? You can just come for one night and see how it goes. It’s really rewarding, and the people from the church who organise it are lovely.”

Michelle glances at Peter, who sort of tilts his head and gives her an encouraging ‘go for it’ goofy smile. She doesn’t need his permission to decide what to do with her free time, but it’s something that affects the amount of time they can spend together, so she should still make sure he’s okay with it. Friday night used to be movie night with Peter and Ned, but since Ned had to start picking his sister up from baseball practice on Friday nights, they’ve moved it to Thursday, and Friday night unofficially became Peter-and-Michelle couple time.

It’s not like they don’t have the whole of the rest of the week for that, though. 

“Okay, sure, sounds good,” Michelle tells Betty. “What time do we need to be there?”

“It starts at six. I’ll meet you outside Broadway station at half past five, and we can take the train together.”

* * *

The soup kitchen is pretty good fun. Peter frets, predictably, about Michelle’s safety, because Hell’s Kitchen is kind of a hotspot for various East European mobs. Michelle rolls her eyes and reminds him that she helped him take down a mugger on their first date.

“I have pepper spray, an attack alarm, I know self-defence and I’m gonna be with people,” she reels off. “I’m not sure how I could be any safer unless you’re planning on accompanying me as my personal Spidey shadow.”

Peter immediately looks sheepish, and Michelle puts a hand to her head. 

“Peter-”

“I just mean – I’m gonna be on patrol anyway!” says Peter. “I can really easily swing by Hell’s Kitchen while you guys are walking to the soup kitchen, and again when you’re done. It wouldn’t be like _shadowing_ you, just… being in the neighbourhood.”

He looks so earnest, and it’s sweet, it really is, but this is not a precedent that Michelle wants to set. Spider-Man is New York’s superhero, not her personal bodyguard.

Besides, on a couple level it’s a bit unhealthily co-dependent. She doesn’t want Peter to start randomly showing up as Spider-Man while she’s doing her own stuff, trying to check up on her. Even if it’s out of concern for her well-being, she can take care of herself, and has done for 16 years.

“I’ll be fine,” she tells him firmly. “You do your patrol; go where Spider-Man is needed. If you’re worrying about me, your head won’t be in the game and that’s dangerous. If there’s a real emergency, I don’t want to be the reason that people get hurt.”

Peter flinches, and she knows that she’s got through to him. It’s harsh, but it’s the truth. This is the kind of thing they need to be honest about now that they’re a couple.

“If there’s any sign of trouble-” Peter persists.

“I will call you. I will put you on speed dial,” Michelle promises. She doesn’t mention that he’s already on her speed dial. “But seriously, I highly doubt that the one night I’m in Hell’s Kitchen, there’s going to be an incident that requires superhero intervention.”

Looking back, she might have jinxed things a little bit.

On the way to the soup kitchen, Michelle scours the rooftops for any hint of a red and blue costumed figure, but Peter has been as good as his word. It’s not that she doesn’t trust him, but “worrywart” might as well be Peter Parker’s middle name. In fact, she’s going to update his name in her phone contacts to that. Peter W Parker.

(She currently has him saved under “Itsy Bitsy”. It’s innocuous enough that she can pass it off as a cute nickname if anyone asks, and it made Peter splutter and turn red the first time he glimpsed it on her phone).

Four hours later, as Betty and Michelle gather up their things, Michelle waves off George’s offer of an escort back to the station. “It’s only a couple of blocks. You’ve got things to manage here; we’ll be fine, won’t we, Betty?”

“Yeah, Michelle has death glare powers. She can annihilate with a single look,” Betty agrees, startling a laugh out of Michelle. Nothing has surprised her more this evening than how much she enjoyed spending time with Betty, who away from school has an amazingly wicked sense of humour.

They wave goodbye to the other volunteers and set off for the station. They’re in the middle of a discussion about their latest Biology project when Michelle hears a sound like a choked-off scream coming from a nearby alleyway.

“Did you hear that?” she asks. Betty nods, looking freaked out.

“Call 911,” Michelle instructs her in an undertone, and sprints towards the mouth of the alley.

“MJ! What are you doing?!” Betty hisses as she pulls out her cell phone.

Michelle skids to a halt in the mouth of the alley, and sees it: a man, broad-shouldered, his arms around a woman’s neck in a chokehold, lifting her off the ground.

Michelle palms her pepper spray in one hand and pulls out her attack alarm with the other. “HEY!” she shouts, to attract the man’s attention.

The man swivels around to look at her, but doesn’t loosen his grip on the woman’s neck. She’s clawing at the back of his hand with her fingernails, shuddering with the effort and the lack of air.

Michelle pulls the keyring on her attack alarm, and a piercing chirruping sound fills the air. She shouts over the noise.

“The cops will be here any minute. Let her go!”

Abruptly, the man does, releasing the hold on the woman’s throat and letting her fall to the ground. There’s a sickening crack as her knees hit the concrete, and she chokes and gasps for air.

But instead of running off in the other direction as Michelle had hoped, her attacker runs straight at Michelle.

Michelle turns tail and runs, but book-lifting in gym class hasn’t done her any favours, and she trips, falling onto her hands and knees and dropping the attack alarm in the process. She kicks it away so that the man can’t get to it – the longer the pin is out, the louder it gets. The noise is already deafening, all-consuming. Someone must be able to hear it – but maybe they’re keeping their distance. She wonders where Betty is, and hopes that she managed to get to safety.

A thick, meaty arm closes around Michelle’s neck and drags her upright; she gags and wheezes, her air supply cut off. Then, before she can do more than kick her legs pointlessly in midair, the hold is abruptly released. Michelle drops back down to the ground and manages to just about stay on her feet, coughing and spitting bile as she massages her throat.

Dimly, she’s aware of some kind of fight taking place behind her, the sound of fists thudding against flesh filling the alleyway. She turns round, and sees a man in skintight red body armour and devil horns – no, really – absolutely whaling on the guy who attacked her, no punches pulled. He hauls her attacker up by his shirt and slams him into the brick wall of the alley; Michelle flinches, thinking this might be overkill, until she remembers the other woman’s expression as she clawed and gasped for air, and decides that this is definitely deserved.

The woman herself is nowhere to be seen; she must have high-tailed it as soon as she got her breath back, not that Michelle blames her.

Eventually Daredevil – yes, she knows who this is, she’s read up on him – decides that he’s done enough and lets the man slide into a bloody, unconscious lump on the ground. He turns towards Michelle, who steels herself, wondering what he’s about to say.

“Do you mind shutting that off?”

Daredevil’s expression, at least from what she can see below the mask, is tense, and Michelle realises that her attack alarm has been shrieking this entire time.

“Shit, sorry-” She picks the alarm up from where it landed a few feet away and slides the pin back in. Blessed silence reigns, and Daredevil’s shoulders relax.

“Thanks. Did you call the cops?”

“My friend did.” Michelle looks around, and right on cue, hears the sound of running footsteps.

“MJ!” Betty careens into the alley and flings her arms around Michelle, who staggers slightly. “Oh my god, are you all right?! I’m so sorry, I went to see if I could get some help, and then I heard your alarm – holy shit!”

This last exclamation is prompted by Betty catching sight of Daredevil, who smirks a little in amusement.

“Stay here until the cops arrive; they’ll need to take a statement,” he says. “And nice work.”

“Hey!”

Michelle turns at the shout, and even though the danger has passed, her heart lifts to see a figure in red and blue spandex swinging into the alley. _Peter._

She blames the leftover adrenaline for the way her pulse picks up, heart doing double-time. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Daredevil make a swift exit, springing up to grab hold of a fire escape and hauling himself out of sight.

Peter lands lightly in the alley and looks from her to Betty.

“Are you two hurt? What happened?” he asks urgently.

“We’re okay, Spider-Man,” says Michelle, at the same time as Betty says, “Hi, Peter!”

There is a beat of total silence. Peter recovers first, with an unconvincing, high-pitched, “Who’s Peter? I’m Spider-Man.”

Betty rolls her eyes. “It’s fine, Peter; Ned told me about your secret identity. I gotta say, it made a lot more sense than the weird stories you’ve been coming out with.”

Michelle can’t help it - she outright cackles as Peter begins to splutter in indignation. She imagines him blushing hotly behind the mask. “Ned is the _literal worst_ at keeping secrets!”

“Hey, you’re the one who confided in him,” Michelle tells him.

“I told you, he found out by accident!”

“Yeah, because it didn’t occur to you that he might come over?”

Peter shakes his head and gets back to the point at hand. “What happened? Were you attacked? Who was the guy in red that ran away just now?”

“We heard a woman being attacked, and MJ ran in to save her,” Betty replies. “She was so brave.”

Michelle might blush just a little – a _little_ – at this praise. “As for the guy in red with horns, that was Daredevil. Surely you know who that is?”

Peter looks blank - well, he’s wearing a mask, but he doesn’t make any movement to indicate that the name means anything to him. “Daredevil?”

“Oh my god – call yourself a superhero?” She ignores Peter’s “Actually-” and carries on, talking over him.

“Vigilante crime-fighter? Runs around in a red body suit beating up mobsters? Well, in the beginning he wore black and they called him the “Man in the Mask”, or the “Devil of Hell’s Kitchen”. He must have gotten a suit upgrade at some point. He’s local to New York, same as you. Another street-level superhero.”

Peter scratches his head thoughtfully. “Actually, yeah, I think I have seen him around. He’s kind of violent; I mostly try to stay out of his way.”

“Yeah, I can’t say I normally approve of excessive force, but in this case...” Michelle nods towards the still unconscious, huddled mass of their attacker. 

Peter steps closer to her. “What did he do to you?” he asks softly.

Michelle rubs at her throat, feeling sick at the memory of the pain and the struggle. It already seems distant, surreal, but the very real ache in her throat testifies to the fact that it actually happened.

But there are sirens finally, finally growing closer, and now isn’t the time or the place for a long explanation.

“I’ll tell you later,” she promises. “Betty and I need to give a statement to the cops, since the woman he actually attacked has run off. Hopefully it won’t take more than a couple of hours; come by my room around midnight.”

Peter catches hold of her hand, and gives it a squeeze. She looks into his blank eyepieces and imagines the concerned, wounded puppy look he’s no doubt wearing underneath the mask. “Just promise me you’re okay.”

Michelle swallows, and yeah, that hurts too. “I’ll be all right,” she says. 

Later, much later, when she and Betty are sat in the back of a cab speeding towards Queens, Michelle puts her head on her knees and just breathes. She feels Betty’s hand come up to rest on her back, rubbing in gentle circles, and she’s grateful for it.

There was no time to think tonight; she just acted. She’s glad she did, but it’s dawning on her that tonight is the closest she’s ever come to being seriously hurt or... worse. If Daredevil hadn’t been there...

Her phone buzzes in her pocket with a text. It’s from Peter.

`**Peter W Parker:** so what happened to calling me at the first sign of trouble?`

She smiles, a little shakily, and texts back:

`**Me:** what happened to not being “in the neighborhood”?`

`**Peter W Parker:** touche. i’m just glad you’re safe`

`**Me:** Yeah. me too.`

* * *

Foggy Nelson is not watching the clock. He isn’t.

He and Matt have been whatever they are – boyfriends, partner-partners (as opposed to business partners), practically married (according to Karen) – for coming up on six months now, and he’s known about Matt’s Daredevil identity for even longer. He’s pretty used to the late-night waiting game.

But earlier in the night, the news was reporting about an unfolding hostage situation which the Daredevil was supposedly at, and rumours were flying that shots had been fired, some saying that Daredevil had been hit.

Foggy has been unable to settle ever since. He has the news playing on mute in the background, subtitles unfolding like ticker tape across the bottom of the screen, but it’s just the same highlights they’ve been showing on loop for the past several hours. Nothing new.

Claire had texted him to let him know that Matt was okay, was with her, but that was over an hour ago. What’s taking him this long to get back home? What if-

Foggy jumps out of his skin at a scraping noise coming from the window. He tenses, reaching down to grasp the baseball bat he keeps nearby for protection, before the window pane lifts up and one Matthew Murdock comes tumbling gracelessly into the room, dressed in full Daredevil outfit.

“Matt!” Foggy leaps to his feet and hurries over to his partner. Matt doesn’t do anything gracelessly unless he’s injured (or really, really drunk).

“It’s fine, I’m fine, I promise,” Matt says hastily, although the way that he winces and slowly levers himself up into a sitting position immediately contradicts this. “Claire took care of it, but I might have pulled a couple of stitches on the way here.”

Foggy runs a hand over his face, and goes to get the first aid kit.

“Of course you did. Take off your ridiculous Halloween costume so I can survey the damage, and then text Claire about how much of an idiot you’ve been. What did you do, decide to stop a mugging on your way home?”

“A convenience store robbery,” Matt admits, slowly pushing back his cowl to reveal a nasty greenish bruise spanning the length of his cheekbone. “It wasn’t serious; just a cocaine addict who was more of a danger to himself than anyone in the store. I knocked him out and took him to a hospital.

“And my outfit’s not ridiculous,” he adds, beginning to undo the rest of his armour. As he removes the chestpiece, Foggy can see the problem: a dark bloodstain has spread across the side of Matt’s white undershirt.

“‘Not serious’, he says,” Foggy huffs. “A convenience store robbery. ‘Not serious’.”

Matt gives him one of his little, knowing smiles that definitely shouldn’t still do the things to Foggy’s chest that they do. “Well, it was no hostage situation.”

“Yeah, and you’re giving me all the details about that one as well,” says Foggy. “Christ, Matt, do you know how _worried_ I’ve been? Come on, onto the couch.”

He gives Matt, now down to his undershirt and boxers, a hand up, watching him closely. Matt’s unsteady on his feet in a way that doesn’t match the injuries Foggy can see; he thinks it’s exhaustion.

They’ve been dealing with a rash of particularly thorny cases at work, and Foggy knows that being Daredevil is how Matt lets off steam, so he hasn’t said anything about the amount of hours Matt has been putting in on the streets. But if this keeps up, Matt’s going to run himself into the ground.

“I’m sorry, Foggy,” Matt says, sounding contrite, as he lowers himself awkwardly onto the couch, face tipped up to stare blankly at the ceiling. “I should have checked in when I left Claire’s, or… I should have known you’d be worried.”

Foggy suppresses a sigh, because he can never stay angry at Matt for too long (well, not any more), especially not when he puts on that wounded duck face of his. “Yeah, well you can make it up to me by telling me exactly what happened tonight,” he says as he pushes Matt’s undershirt up above his ridiculous abs and begins to clean the wound on his side.

On second look, it’s not as bad as the bloodstain made it seem; Matt only popped a couple of stitches, and the bleeding has already slowed. Foggy thinks he might be able to get away with just taping a bit of gauze over it with some band-aids.

Matt begins to talk, describing the moment when he’d been passing by the site of the hostage situation – a small antiques museum – and heard armed intruders inside the building holding a security guard and three of the night staff at gunpoint, telling them not to move.

He relates how he broke in, how the police arrived and surrounded the place, giving him unpleasant, visceral flashbacks to the time when he’d been holed up inside a warehouse with Vladimir, the Russian mobster. The media had painted it as a hostage situation then, with the Man in the Mask as the villain.

Foggy winces at that, thinking back to his own reaction at the time and his grim, furious certainty that this masked man was bad news.

“One of the gunmen got off a lucky shot that clipped me,” Matt adds, gesturing down at his side, “but I managed to take them all out pretty effectively, before they could do anything to hurt the hostages. That was when the police stormed the place, so… I took off.”

By now, Foggy has finished tending to Matt’s wound and is perched on the arm of the sofa, just listening, the medical kit half-open on his lap.

“So, you stopped a hostage situation, _and_ managed to foil a convenience store robbery all in one night,” Foggy summarises as Matt trails off into silence. “Is that all? Nothing else interesting happened – a rogue mugger, or two?”

He’s being sarcastic, of course, but Matt says “Mmm,” thoughtfully as if he’s just remembered something.

“‘Mmm’? What’s ‘mmm’? ‘Mmm’ doesn’t sound good. ‘Mmm’ sounds like there _was_ something else.”

“I ran into another superhero, earlier. Well, almost.”

“Really?” asks Foggy, trying to think if the Avengers have been spotted around New York lately. Matt’s never mentioned interacting with another superhero in the course of his nightly activities.

“Yeah, you heard of the Spider-Man?”

“Oh, yeah,” Foggy says, remembering blurry videos of a guy in what looked like a red tracksuit and goggles swinging around New York. “He’s another local, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t encounter him much. He showed up just as I’d finished taking care of an asshole who’d been choking women in an alleyway.”

Foggy’s knuckles turn white on the first aid kit, and he channels the surge of angry energy by closing it and jumping to his feet to put it away. “Really,” he says, keeping his voice even, even though he knows it won’t fool Matt. “I hope he got what was coming to him.”

Matt grins, and it’s a Devil’s grin, sharp enough to cut glass. “And then some,” he confirms.

“Good.” Foggy walks back over to the couch and tucks himself into a corner, trying to avoid jostling Matt. “So what about the Spider-Man? Did you say hello?”

Matt shakes his head. “It wasn’t really the time to socialise. But I heard them talking as I left, and I think he might have known one of the women who was attacked. His girlfriend, maybe.”

“Well, that would explain why he was in the area,” Foggy muses. “Hey, maybe next time you two should team up.”

He’s expecting the humourless snort that Matt gives in reply. “He hangs around with the Avengers. He’s not officially part of the team, but he fought on Tony Stark’s side in Berlin. I think we could do without another visit from Stark.”

Foggy winces, remembering. Tact is not Tony Stark’s strong suit, and neither is respect for other people’s privacy. He’d paid Nelson and Murdock a visit a little while back to try and convince Daredevil to join the Avengers, and had revealed that he’d run facial recognition scans on footage of Matt in order to identify him. He’d also offered to build Matt a robotic Seeing Eye dog.

“At least you got a sweet tablet out of it.”

About a week after Matt had told Stark to go fuck himself in no uncertain terms, a package had arrived containing a one-of-a-kind, top-of-the-range tactile StarkPad with braille interface. The man’s attempt at an apology, Foggy supposed. He thinks actually saying sorry might have been better received, but the tablet is cool, and Matt uses it all the time.

Matt’s only reply is a grunt, which Foggy supposes is fair enough.

“Yeah, I get it, no Avengers,” he says. “We can do without that hassle, always being on-call to save the world. Though I gotta say, I wouldn’t mind having a bigger support network.”

He says it lightly, one hundred percent joking, but Matt’s face immediately crumples with the patented Murdock Guilt, and Foggy sighs.

“Matty, no, I didn’t mean it like that. Come on.”

“I- I know it’s hard for you to have to deal with- with the consequences of everything I do, on your own-”

“I’m not on my _own_ , Matt. I’ve got Karen, and Claire to commiserate with about your masochistic love of getting beat up as well as your inability to recognise your own limits. I’m fine, I swear.”

When Matt looks unconvinced, Foggy adds, “I’d much rather worry, and know _why_ I’m worrying, than still be in the dark. You know that.”

Matt is silent, and Foggy decides to let him digest that for a little bit. He often forgets that the two of them have only been this - a couple, or whatever it is they are - for six months, because they’ve been best friends for so much longer than that. And yeah, it means they know each other really damn well, but there are still things that can trip them up in the context of a romantic relationship. 

“All right,” Foggy says, after the silence has stretched out for several minutes. “You look almost dead, and I for one intend to get a head start on my Saturday lie-in. Let’s move this to the bedroom, and not in a sexy way.”

“Spoilsport,” Matt mumbles, his head leaning against the couch cushion, and oh yeah, he’s halfway to being dead to the world already, if not more than that.

“Come on, Mr. Devil,” Foggy cajoles him, standing and holding out an arm for Matt to pull himself up. “I know that falling asleep on the couch might seem like a nice idea, but I think your back – and the hole in your side – will thank you in the morning if you can make it to a bed.”

Matt grumbles, but allows Foggy to give him a hand up from the couch. They make it to the bedroom, and Matt only pauses long enough to strip off his bloodstained undershirt before collapsing onto the bed.

As he’s getting ready for bed, though, Foggy catches Matt setting an alarm to wake them both up at nine o’clock.

“9 am, Matt? On a Saturday? Is that really necessary?”

“Mmm,” says Matt, flopping back into bed as if the act of setting the alarm has used up the very last of his energy. “Too much work to do… Gotta go over the depositions for the Gutierez case and file the…” His monologue trails off into incoherent mumbling.

Shaking his head, Foggy waits for Matt’s breathing to even out, then gives it another ten minutes for him to be well and truly asleep before he creeps over to Matt’s side of the bed.

Matt’s speaking alarm clock works a lot differently to the sighted kind, but after years of sharing a room with Matt, Foggy knows his way around both, and it only takes him a second to remember how to access the alarm menu.

“ALARM SETTINGS,” the clock announces loudly, and Foggy freezes. There’s no way that Matt wouldn’t have heard that even if he didn’t have crazy enhanced hearing abilities.

He watches Matt’s sleeping form closely, but Matt doesn’t stir, so after a moment Foggy carries on with what he was doing and turns off the alarm. “ALARM OFF.”

As Foggy climbs into bed next to Matt, he thinks he catches the hint of a smile on his partner’s lips, before he curls one arm across his chest and drifts off to sleep.

* * *

In spite of everything that happened the previous Friday – in spite of getting assaulted and choked in an alleyway in Hell’s Kitchen – MJ still wants to go back to volunteer at the soup kitchen with Betty the following week.

Peter tries his best to talk her out of it. Gently at first, then with increasing seriousness and alarm when he realises that she has no intention of budging on her decision. His girlfriend’s stubbornness drives him absolutely crazy sometimes, and he knows he’s one to talk, but he has literal superpowers – including an insane healing factor – and a whole armoury of advanced tech built into his suit.

MJ has self-defence and some amateur martial arts training, plus a dogged insistence on doing what she wants, and the ability to calmly turn every single one of his arguments back on him.

They have their first real fight about it, up in his bedroom after school one day. Peter doesn’t like to dwell too much on the specifics, but it involves MJ shouting at him that she can take care of herself, that just because she _might_ need saving doesn’t mean she wants him following her around; any citizen of New York might need saving at any point in time.

Peter, voice wobbling and close to tears, retorts that she didn’t seem to mind being saved when it was Daredevil doing the saving – just because he’s her boyfriend, is he somehow no longer allowed to look out for her?

At that, MJ lets out a huge breath, her shoulders slumping and all the fight going out of her. Peter feels a tiny flash of victory at having gotten his point across, then just feels sick at himself. He’s not trying to win here.

“No, Pete,” says MJ, and her voice is unsteady too. She pushes a piece of hair out of her face and behind her ear. “But _because_ you’re my boyfriend, you saving me as Spider-Man isn’t on the same level as Daredevil helping a random citizen.”

Peter has to will himself to refocus around the happy skip that his heart gives when he hears her call him her boyfriend. He doesn’t think she’s ever said the b-word out loud before.

“Look, shit happens on the streets of New York,” MJ is saying. “You’ve seen a lot more of it than anyone else has. But regular people still manage to have lives and jobs and volunteer at soup kitchens in spite of that. The guys who set up the soup kitchen are a bunch of Catholic priests, for God’s sake – I doubt they know Tae Kwon Do.”

Peter’s lip twitches. “Well, they’re Catholic priests in New York,” he points out.

A corner of MJ’s mouth tugs up. “You’re right; they probably do.”

Peter grins at her, relieved that they’re no longer yelling at each other. Then, a possible compromise occurs to him.

“Okay, I won’t fight you on helping out at the soup kitchen any more, but I wanna give you something,” he says, going over to his closet, opening a drawer underneath it and drawing out a plain shoebox. MJ follows, watching him warily.

Peter pulls out one of his old web shooters from inside the box with reverent care, and hands it to her. The web shooter, with its silver cuff and bulky prong, seems retro and clunky now that he’s used to Mr. Stark’s tech, but the web shooters served him well before Tony Stark came along, and he knows they’re still in good working order.

“I designed and built these myself,” he says. “I stopped needing to use them after Mr. Stark upgraded my suit, but they still work great, and I can put the latest version of my web fluid in there. It’s really strong and it’ll hold for a couple of hours – perfect for incapacitating someone. Or shutting them up,” he adds, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

MJ takes the web shooter, turning it over in her hands and examining it. She looks grudgingly impressed.

“You can wear it on one wrist, and it should fit under the sleeve of your sweater, to conceal it,” Peter tells her. “It would only have to be for emergencies, but it’s long-range, unlike your pepper spray. So you don’t have to wait until some douchebag is in your face before you take him out. I know how much you hate that.”

MJ snorts a laugh, and smiles up at him, her hair falling in her face. Peter feels his stomach flip over at how beautiful his girlfriend is, just – all the time. In every moment.

“So, does this make me Spider-Woman?” she asks, deadpan, as she slides the cuff onto her wrist. It’s a little big for her, but he can adjust it.

“Uh…” Peter blinks at her, a little wrong-footed. “Yeah, I guess? Sorta? But you’ve gotta master the web shooter first.”

MJ arches an eyebrow at him. “All right, then; why don’t you give me a tutorial?”

“Sure!”

MJ extends her arm, palm facing up, and Peter moves so that he’s standing next to her, fingers gently cradling her hand. This close, her hair brushes up against his cheek, and he can smell her apple shampoo every time he takes a breath. Peter has to will his racing heart to calm down; they’ve been dating for four weeks, and he’s still like this whenever he gets close to MJ. Actually, he probably always will be.

He runs his thumb over the switch, located high up on the palm of the web shooter. “You press this switch to activate it,” he says. “I designed it for me, so I don’t know how easily you’ll be able to-” MJ brings down her thumb in a sharp stabbing motion, and the switch activates. “Oh! Okay then.”

MJ looks sideways at him with a smirk, and Peter swallows, his mouth suddenly dry. “Then, all you have to do is double-tap here with these two fingers, and shoot.”

He guides MJ’s hand until she’s pointing it at the waste paper basket next to his bed. “Go ahead and shoot,” he murmurs.

MJ does, and the web shooter jerks slightly but the shot still hits its mark, coating the bottom of the basket in sticky web fluid. “Holy crap. Um, good shot,” says Peter, and MJ’s smirk grows.

Peter tears himself away from her side and walks around the room, looking for objects they can use for target practice that Aunt May won’t utterly annihilate him for breaking if something goes wrong. “What about if we-”

He suddenly feels an urgent need to _move_ , the same weird instinct that alerted him to the presence of the mugger who jumped him and MJ in the alley after their date. Peter jumps away, and the web fluid hits the exact spot where his feet had been just seconds earlier, solidifying into a sticky puddle on the floor.

“MJ!” Peter protests. MJ grins in triumph.

“Think fast, Parker,” she says, taking aim again.

As she fires, Peter ducks and rolls down towards where he left the open box containing the other web shooter. He grabs it and slides it onto his wrist in one smooth motion, then straightens back up with it levelled at MJ’s face. Her grin disappears, replaced with a look of fierce concentration.

“Oh, it’s _on_ now.”

Their epic battle with the web shooters lasts up until May intervenes, concerned about the thumps and bangs she can hear through the ceiling. Peter realises that it might not have sounded great on the heels of both of them shouting at each other, but MJ turns up the charm and reassures May. Even though Peter’s seen a lot more of MJ’s personable side since they started dating, he still finds it weird in comparison to her default mode of deadpan snark and sarcasm.

Surprisingly, May also approves of MJ taking one of Peter’s web shooters. “Of course I would prefer if he didn’t have them to begin with,” she says, shooting Peter a look which makes him flash back to the moment where May accidentally found out about his superhero identity. There had been a lot of yelling. And calling up Tony Stark to yell some more.

“But I’m not gonna say no to anything that makes you safer,” May continues. “But MJ, honey, if you see anything bad happening, you should keep your distance and dial 911. Don’t get involved.”

“Of course, Aunt May,” says MJ, sounding completely sincere. She catches Peter’s eye, and he raises his eyebrows as high as they can go before hastily rearranging his face when May looks at him.

“All right. So, MJ, can I persuade you to stay for dinner?”

“I would love to, Aunt May, but my sister’s cooking tonight, so I promised I’d be back home for dinner,” MJ says apologetically.

“Okay, well next time you should definitely join us for Thai food.”

“I will.”

“That girlfriend of yours has her head screwed on,” Aunt May tells Peter over dinner later. Peter nods, still unable to keep from blushing slightly at the mention of MJ being his girlfriend. It’s a problem. “I think she’s really good for you, Pete.”

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, slightly breathlessly. “Me too.”

* * *

It’s complete coincidence that has Peter swinging by Hell’s Kitchen a lot more over the next few weeks. It’s not an area of the city he knows super well, and if he’s supposed to be a – what had MJ called it? – a ‘street-level superhero’, then he should really know every part of the city as well as the next. (Though of course, Queens is home, and always will be).

He makes sure that he’s nowhere near the route that MJ and Betty take from the station to the soup kitchen on Friday evening, but if his patrol takes him around the outskirts of Hell’s Kitchen, well, there’s no shortage of suspicious activity for him to keep an eye on.

Being around Hell’s Kitchen also means that he has a few more almost run-ins with Daredevil. More than once, Peter swings by an alleyway or some other dark corner to hear a serious beat-down taking place; when he checks on the scene, he sees Daredevil in full swing, whaling on some sketchy-looking guy (or often multiple guys).

Peter considers lending a hand – or a web – but Daredevil always seems to have it covered, and he doesn’t really seem the type to be team-up friendly. He sometimes stops for a bit to watch, though, because damn, the guy has some seriously cool moves. Peter wonders whether he could ever learn to fight like that.

Despite him keeping carefully out of sight, a couple of times when Peter’s been in the vicinity Daredevil has momentarily swivelled his head in Peter’s direction, like he can sense him or something. Well, maybe he can; he doesn’t know what the guy’s superpower is. Unless super anger counts, because Daredevil seems to have that in spades.

He’s like a non-transforming version of the Hulk. With horns.

Then, one evening while Peter’s out on patrol, he passes by an empty, derelict parking lot and gets a _really_ bad feeling. His weird sixth sense is suddenly turned up to 11, like there's an alarm going off in the back of his skull.

Swooping down to take a closer look, Peter sees Daredevil, fighting hand-to-hand with three muscle-bound bodybuilder guys. There’s a woman there, too, standing a little way back from the fight, who seems to be just watching. Waiting for something.

Normally Peter wouldn’t even still be here by now, because this is Daredevil and he can handle himself against three guys, easily. But there’s something off about his movements; he’s moving sluggishly, his reaction times just a fraction too slow, and Peter can tell that the goons are wearing him down.

There’s a burned-out street lamp not far from where Daredevil is fighting, and Peter webs onto it as silently as he can, looking down on the scene. He doesn’t think any of the participants will be looking for a dark shape clinging to the top of a street lamp, but if they do spot him, he’s effectively cornered, so he needs to move quickly if he’s going to.

He’s about to whisper to Karen to try and analyse Daredevil’s vitals, see if he can figure out why the guy is moving so strangely, when he sees it: the woman draws a device from inside her coat and points it towards Daredevil. It’s shaped a bit like a gun, but looks too hi-tech, the metal too bright, and every instinct in Peter’s body is screaming at him to not let her fire it.

Before he can think twice, Peter webs the gun out of her hands, flicking it away and sending it clattering across the asphalt floor of the parking lot.

The woman looks up and spots him, screaming something in a language that isn’t English, but Peter’s already moving, swinging down into the fray and colliding feet-first with one of the goons, who goes down like a sack of potatoes.

Crouched on top of the goon’s fallen body, Peter fires his webs at one of his friends, gumming his fists up with sticky web fluid. Yanking on the webs, he pulls the goon forward and simultaneously sends himself flying towards the guy like a javelin. He clamps his legs around the man’s waist, twists, and flips him head-first into the concrete. The man smashes into the ground and doesn’t get up.

Peter straightens up and looks around. Daredevil is standing a little way away, breathing hard, having managed to dispatch the last thug while Peter was taking care of the other two. There’s no sign of the woman with the weird gun.

“Daredevil,” says Peter, and Daredevil turns around. His horned suit looks all kinds of scary in the dim light of the parking lot, and Peter has to work not to recoil slightly. Daredevil won’t be angry that he helped out… right? “Are you okay?”

Daredevil nods. He’s still for a moment, almost as if he’s listening for something, and Peter waits.

“She got away,” Daredevil says finally, in a rough growl.

“Who, the woman? Yeah, sorry, I dunno when that happened, I was kind of occupied…” Peter says sheepishly. “She had a really weird-looking gun. She was going to shoot it at you, but I… I stopped her.” _You’re welcome for that_ , he adds, silently.

“You should have taken her out,” says Daredevil. “Left the thugs to me.”

Peter blinks at that. He saved the guy’s ass, and Daredevil is criticising him for doing it wrong? “Well, you weren’t holding your own too well, and she seemed like less of an immediate threat,” he points out.

“I could have handled it,” Daredevil insists. Peter shrugs.

“If you say so. You’re welcome for the assist, by the way. I don’t know what that gun thing was supposed to do, but I don’t think it would have been pretty. And you already seem kind of rough.”

Silence. Peter shifts his weight awkwardly as Daredevil just… stands there. Has he passed out standing up? Is that a thing?

He’s about to very quietly murmur to Karen to check the man’s vitals when Daredevil speaks. Quietly enough that Peter thinks he might not have heard it if he didn’t have slightly enhanced hearing.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” Peter replies, a little overly chipper, but hey, he didn’t actually expect a thanks out of a guy as big and tough as Daredevil. “And if I can push my luck a bit more, you should really get some medical attention. Do you want me to uh, I dunno, help you to a hospital? Run to a drug store?”

Daredevil actually chuckles at that and shakes his head. “I have a friend who lives around here who can take care of it. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“All right, fair enough,” says Peter. He knows a dismissal when he hears one. “In that case, I’m just gonna… go about my patrol. So. See you around, Daredevil?”

When nothing else seems forthcoming, Peter jumps up onto the lamppost, the best vantage point for swinging away. He’s about to climb up it when Daredevil speaks again.

“You seem to be in the area a lot lately,” he comments. His tone is mild – for a growly-voiced devil guy – but Peter immediately freezes, feeling like he’s been caught doing something wrong. “I didn’t think you were a Hell’s Kitchen local. What brings you to this part of New York all of a sudden?”

For once, it’s Peter’s turn to say nothing, unsure of how to respond to that. Is Daredevil mad at him for encroaching on his turf? Is he going to warn Peter to stay away?

“If I had to guess,” Daredevil continues, “I’d say you’re keeping an eye on someone. The woman from the alleyway, maybe?”

“Wouldn’t you do the same?” Peter bursts out. Daredevil cocks his head, and Peter realises he sounds defensive, but now _Daredevil_ is calling him out, for crying out loud, and he just – he wants to give his side. “Sorry, it’s just – I don’t know if you have a… special person in your life, but if you did, and you thought you could keep them safer, even just a little bit, by being nearby… Wouldn’t you do it?”

Daredevil says nothing, and on reflection, Peter decides that’s a pretty good parting line, so he climbs up to the top of the street lamp, fires a web, and swings away.

Wait ‘til Ned hears that he teamed up with _Daredevil_.

* * *

“You’re being awfully quiet tonight. Even for a guy with three cracked ribs.”

Matt laughs a little at Claire’s dry, arch tone of voice coming from down by his torso, where she’s currently wrapping said cracked ribs with a support bandage. He stops laughing pretty quickly, though, because yeah, not a good idea.

“Sorry. Just thinking.”

“How’s your head feeling? Still fuzzy?”

“It’s a lot better. I think whatever drugs they injected me with are beginning to wear off.”

Claire sighs, and he feels her pin the bandage in place and then move away, hears the slight creak of her joints as she straightens up. “I wish you’d let me take a blood sample. I can get it tested at the hospital; no-one would need to know where it came from-”

Matt shakes his head. “No, it’s too risky, Claire. I appreciate the offer, but… I’ll be fine. I think it was just a sedative of some kind.” A powerful sedative. Matt knows he’s resilient – it takes a lot to slow him down, and that drug had him completely off his game. It messed with his senses, too, which was far worse.

“You _hope_ it was just a sedative,” Claire mutters, and he smiles slightly. He doesn’t tell her that he plans to start tracking down the gang that the thugs who attacked him belong to as soon as he’s able, and she doesn’t ask, because she already knows he will.

He didn’t stick around to interrogate the unconscious thugs after Spider-Man left, because there were three of them and he could still feel the effects of the drug in his system, and he’s capable of making good decisions sometimes – thank you, Foggy – but he’s already got a few leads he can follow.

It would have helped if he’d been able to recover the gun, though.

Claire’s figure approaches again, and Matt feels the firm pressure of a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back into the sofa. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d started to lean forward in thought. “Sorry.”

“For God’s- sorry, for goodness’ sake, give those ribs a chance to heal,” Claire scolds him. “Want some coffee? You’re not going anywhere for the next while, and it might help to improve your alertness.”

“I’m perfectly alert,” Matt protests.

Claire says nothing, and he knows that she’s giving him a highly sceptical look.

“…Coffee would be great,” he relents.

“Good choice,” says Claire, smugly.

He listens to her moving around in the kitchen, putting a pot of coffee on to brew, and focuses on the sounds to block out every other noise in the city that’s making its painful way to his ears, every noise that makes him want to leap out of his chair and run to help.

Claire comes back into the room, and presses a hot mug of coffee into his hands. Matt thanks her and takes a sip.

“You know, it’s a wonder you aren’t in worse shape,” Claire comments. She takes a seat across the room from him and sips at her own coffee. “Considering you were drugged, and outnumbered four to one.”

Matt nods. He debates over whether or not to tell Claire about the unexpected assistance that he had. But there’s no harm in it, and he’s curious as to what Claire might know about Spider-Man. “I had some help,” he admits.

“Really? Who from?”

“Have you heard of the Spider-Man?”

“Oh, yeah,” says Claire, and there’s a slight laugh in her voice. “The ‘friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man’? He’s an interesting one. Probably the only local superhero who’s more mysterious than you, though his get-up is a bit more colourful.”

“More mysterious than Daredevil?” Matt repeats. He’s mostly just confused, but he comes off sounding a little bit affronted, and now Claire is definitely laughing. “No, I just mean – how is that possible? He fought very publicly with the Avengers in Berlin.”

“Yeah, but no-one knows anything else about him,” says Claire. “Tony Stark has been noticeably close-lipped about him – especially for Tony ‘I _am_ Iron Man’ Stark. No-one knows for sure who he is, or where he came from.”

“Hmmm,” says Matt thoughtfully, sinking back into the sofa a bit. He has a theory about why that might be, but he’s not about to say anything. Spider-Man’s identity is none of his business, and he has a right to his privacy.

Later, after Claire has assessed his condition and pronounced him fit to leave, Matt quietly lets himself into the flat. Foggy is asleep in his favourite chair, his heartbeat slow and steady, snoring (for once) at a low volume. Matt had texted him to let him know that he was resting up for a while at Claire’s before heading back and there was no need to wait up, but of course Foggy had anyway.

Matt sheds his armour piece by piece, then pads over to perch on the arm of the sofa, watching his sleeping partner.

_“If you thought you could keep them safer, even just a little bit, by being nearby… Wouldn’t you do it?”_

The lengths he would go to to keep Foggy safe don’t really bear thinking about. Forget following him to another part of the city, Matt would follow him halfway across the world.

He sits up, thinking, until sleep finally takes him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warning:** Warning for descriptions of assault - violent, not sexual. The assault happens first to a minor character, then to the POV character. If you want to skip past it, stop reading at the line, _"They wave goodbye to the other volunteers and set off for the station."_ and begin reading again at, _"The woman herself is nowhere to be seen"._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit goes down at the soup kitchen, and MJ and Peter meet Nelson and Murdock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um.... sorry it's late? ^^;;
> 
> Agh, I know, I'm a terrible person who couldn't keep to a posting schedule if her life depended on it. This is why I should know better than to start publishing fics before they're finished - though in my own defence, I _had_ written this chapter when I started posting (all except for one small chunk). But the action felt off, the sequence of events didn't flow well, and the pacing was horrible, so I spent the past eight months - in and around various life things, including getting a new job - trying to fix it.
> 
> (Writing action scenes is my personal Achilles Heel, so why I decided to write a chapter which is 70% action scene, I don't know).
> 
> Most of it is still pretty cheesy, but since this is a superhero fic, it should blend right in ;)
> 
> Anyway, I present to you this very late update, with my sincerest apologies and thanks for sticking with me all this time. I really hope you enjoy it!
> 
> A couple more notes before we begin:  
> \- This fic is not in any way compliant with Infinity War, given that it was first published a good four months before IW was released (but since it's an MCU fic, I thought I would make that clear anyway). It's set post-Spider-Man Homecoming, and a vague unspecified amount of time after the events of Daredevil Season 1. Don't think too hard about the timeline, basically xD  
> \- Heed the "Canon-Typical Violence" tag for this chapter - although it's really Spider-Man levels of canon-typical violence, not Daredevil levels. I'm too much of a fluffy bunny to write Daredevil levels of violence. Also, I've realised I should really start putting more specific trigger warnings on these chapters, so skip to the end notes if you want to know what those are. I've gone back and added them to Chapter 1, as well. (Better late than never...)

It happens about a month after Michelle starts volunteering at the soup kitchen.

After she and Betty arrive for the evening, George warns them that there might be some trouble. “Last night we had a few members from a local gang harassing people, and we had to make them leave,” he says sadly. “There’s a good chance they’ll be back tonight. If anyone starts causing trouble, run to the back and get one of the senior leaders.”

Michelle and Betty both promise that they will. Michelle is on edge for the first hour, eyes constantly scanning the church for anything out of place – someone acting shifty, a concealed weapon – and jumping at sudden noises.

But gradually, she relaxes into the familiar routine, hefting tureens full of hot soup out of the kitchen and into the main part of the church, chatting and joking with the regulars and the other volunteers. That’s why, at first, she doesn’t even pick up on the sound: a revving motorcycle outside the church, slowly getting louder.

“MJ!” Betty screams, and it’s all the warning Michelle gets before a motorcycle bursts through the open church doors directly behind her and ploughs into the long, wooden table.   
  
Michelle dives for cover as the table overturns and several heavy tureens of soup go flying. She’s not quite fast enough, though, and an empty tureen clangs down onto her foot, causing her to cry out in pain. People around her are screaming as they’re splashed by scalding hot soup, and now there are two, three more motorcycles bursting in through the doors, ploughing into the chaos.

Blinking tears out of her eyes, Michelle wiggles her fingers into her pocket and with difficulty, extracts her cell phone from where it’s trapped awkwardly underneath her hip. She quickly selects Peter’s name from her contacts list.

` **SOS** ,` she texts him. Hopefully he can work out the rest.

Her view of what’s happening is mostly blocked by the overturned table; Michelle can hear shouting and threats, crashes and bangs, but no gunshots – yet. She sees another figure lying a little way away, and swears under her breath, wriggling forward on her elbows as quickly as she can.

Pain lances through her foot with every movement, and Michelle grits her teeth as she reaches out to shake the woman’s shoulder. It’s Shona, who normally comes to the soup kitchen with her young son – he’s staying with relatives out of town this week, thank God.

“Shona,” Michelle hisses. “Shona!”

Shona stirs, and looks round, blinking at Michelle in a daze. There’s an ugly bruise on her forehead, and soup splattered in her dark curls. “Michelle,” she murmurs. “What is-”

Her question is cut off into a choked gasp as a large, pale hand reaches down and closes around her shirt collar, dragging her forcibly to her feet. Michelle can’t suppress the shout that escapes her as she watches a heavy-set man leering into Shona’s terrified face.

She’s about to leap to her feet and attack him, busted foot be damned, when she feels the heavy weight around her wrist and remembers – Peter’s web shooter.

Michelle carefully pulls her sleeve back to reveal the bulky silver contraption that she’s taken to wearing on her wrist. She’s got one shot at this if she can aim right.

“Are you going to keep quiet for me?” the man leers at her, and he raises his other hand, which is holding a–

 _gun_ _–_

 _oh my god he’s got a gun_ runs the frantic thought through Michelle’s mind as she depresses the trigger on the web shooter, and her aim almost – _almost –_ falters. But she still fires true, and the muzzle of the gun is coated in sticky web fluid before he can press it to the underside of Shona’s jaw.

“Jesus **fuck**!” the man shouts, gun hand jerking away as he casts around for the source of the webbing. It’s all the opportunity Shona needs, and she drives a foot firmly into the man’s groin.

Howling in pain, the man releases her, and Shona staggers to the ground, reaching out a hand briefly for balance. Michelle grabs her hand, steadying her, and Shona pulls at her urgently in response.

“Michelle, run!” she cries.

Michelle allows herself to be pulled to her feet, clenching her jaw as she puts weight on her injured foot again.

As she staggers after Shona, a shot rings out behind them and Michelle stumbles, almost trips, her vision going white around the edges.

_what happened, who was it, who got hit, I can’t feel my foot, did he shoot my foot–_

Shona squeezes her fingers harder and Michelle panics, convinced that this is Shona signalling to her that she’s been shot. “Shona?” she gasps out.

“Not me, honey,” comes the reply, and Michelle focuses on that, pushing the blind panic to the back of her mind. _Pull yourself together, Michelle, you’re no good to anyone if you can’t think straight._

They stumble past overturned, broken furniture and pieces of crockery, slipping on bits of food underfoot. The once grand and imposing stone building now resembles a bomb site. Three of the thugs are busy looting everything in sight, tearing down ornate light fixtures and taking statuettes, and Michelle’s hand goes to her web shooter. But then Shona is pulling her sharply to the left, behind a large pillar, and Michelle goes, not wanting to put the other woman in danger.

The two of them crouch behind the pillar, panting hard and listening. There’s no sound of anyone pursuing them. _Maybe that gunshot was the sick fuck shooting himself in the foot,_ Michelle thinks with vicious satisfaction. Her foot is throbbing rhythmically, and her toes feel twice their usual size. She tries not to think about the kind of permanent damage she might have done by running with could be a fracture or broken bone.

“What do we do now?” Shona breathes, after a long moment.

Michelle pulls out her phone, angling the bright screen towards the ground, and sees a missed call and several text messages from Peter.

“Did someone call the cops?” she whispers back, to cover the action. She opens up the text messages.

`**Peter W Parker:** ????`

`**Peter W Parker:** at the soup kitchen???`

`**Peter W Parker:** nvm on my way`

Michelle hopes, with the part of her mind that’s not frantically spinning out doomsday scenarios for their current situation, that Peter is using common sense to work out her whereabouts and not some creepy Tony Stark-patented tracking method.

“I think so,” Shona replies softly, worriedly. “But who knows how long they’ll take to get here.”

“I don’t give a **SHIT** , old man, just give me the fucking keys!”

Both women jump and tense at the shout that comes from somewhere behind them. Michelle scrambles to her feet and casts around. They’re at one end of a long corridor of sorts, separated from the main body of the church by pillars like the one she and Shona are currently hiding behind.

At the end of the corridor there is a wooden door which Michelle knows leads to an office where the collection is stored and counted after Mass. Other valuables, like the huge, ornate processional cross and the golden chalice and Communion cups are also locked in there while the soup kitchen is in operation.

Right now, one of the gang members is holding an older man – Michelle recognises him as one of the priests, Father… Lantom? – by the collar up against the locked door, fist raised in a clear threat.

“I told you,” Father Lantom responds in a calm, level voice, as if he’s just talking to another member of the congregation. “I don’t keep the keys with me. We store them in a safe place so that no-one untoward can get hold of them.”

 “Then fucking **find** them!” the other man growls, at the same time that Michelle shouts, _“HEY!”_

She runs down the corridor, but she’s too far away to keep the man’s fist from colliding with Father Lantom’s face.

Michelle cries out, in shock and in pain as she puts even more weight on her injured foot. She stumbles, her leg threatening to buckle beneath her, but she can’t fall down now, she has to stop this.

“Leave him ALONE-” she yells- and then goes still as she sees the figure behind the two men.

Despite the bruise blooming on his cheekbone, Father Lantom smiles. It confuses the thug threatening him enough that he looks round – just in time for Daredevil’s billy club to smash into his face.

The man crumples to the ground, and Daredevil reaches out to steady Father Lantom with surprising gentleness.

“Are you all right, Father?” he asks gruffly.

“I’m all right,” the priest replies, rubbing at his throat with one hand. “You came in the nick of time. We need to go and help the others.”

“What others?” Shona asks, suddenly at Michelle’s side. She helps Michelle hobble the remaining few yards to where the two are standing.

“A lot of people managed to get out, but there’s a group still barricaded in the kitchen,” says Father Lantom.

Michelle wonders if Betty is with them. She couldn’t see her in the immediate aftermath of the gang bursting into the church, but she wouldn’t put it past her friend to have stayed and tried to help.

“I’ll get them out,” Daredevil growls.

“We’ll help,” Michelle asserts as confidently as she can, trying to stand up a little straighter.

Daredevil turns towards her, seeming to scrutinise her condition, though Michelle can’t actually tell where he’s looking underneath the cowl that covers the upper half of his face (how does he see though that thing?). She tenses, preparing for a dismissive comment about her being in no fit state to help anyone.

“Can you walk?” Daredevil asks.

“Well enough, for a bit,” Michelle replies honestly, and Daredevil gives a short nod, seeming satisfied with her answer.

“Michelle…” Shona murmurs, but subsides at the look on Michelle’s face.

“You can help Father Lantom lead the remaining people to safety. I’ll go out first, try to sneak up on them. After that, there’ll be a window of a few minutes for you to get everyone out.

“Once you get outside, don’t stop or turn back – keep going until you can get some medical assistance. An ambulance is already on its way; it’ll be here inside of ten minutes.”

Michelle has no intention of getting help for herself until she’s sure that every single member of the soup kitchen is safe, but she nods anyway, and Shona gives her assent beside her.

“This way,” says Daredevil.

He steals ahead down the corridor like a shadow, completely silent. The three of them follow behind as quietly as they possibly can, Michelle trying not to limp too heavily, Shona holding out an arm to support her (with a steely glare that tells Michelle she’ll take it or else), and Father Lantom keeping a watchful eye.

Just as they’re about to draw level with the main body of the church, Daredevil holds a hand up behind him, signalling them to stop. A minute later, Michelle hears footsteps approaching, and a voice.

“Coops, man, what the fuck’s taking you so long? We gotta blow this joint, the cops’ll be here any second! Coops?”

Daredevil tenses, ready to spring into action as the man draws nearer. Suddenly, he goes very still, and looks up towards the roof of the church. Michelle follows his gaze – and draws in a sharp breath at the sight of a familiar figure in red and blue spandex crouched in the rafters.

Shona notices and looks up too, then immediately claps a hand over her mouth to stifle her reaction. She looks at Michelle with wide eyes, as if to confirm what she just saw. Michelle nods, slowly.

At first she’s not sure whether Peter can see them, or if he’s in the middle of springing his own ambush on the unsuspecting thug below them. Then she sees his head turning in their direction, light glinting off his eyepieces. He raises a hand and gives a tiny wave, and Michelle wants to cover her face and groan over what an incurable **dork** her boyfriend is. She experiences an almost overwhelming urge to flip him off discreetly. Only the gravity of their situation stops her.

Daredevil moulds himself to the back of one of the pillars, and motions for them to do the same. Michelle experiences a strong sense of déjà-vu as she and Shona huddle in the shadows behind the next pillar, Father Lantom next to them. She can see the man now – the one looking for “Coops”, who she can only assume is the guy that Daredevil knocked out back in the corridor – a skinny, stunted-looking man with greying, greasy hair and a lot of very ugly tattoos.

“Coops, quit playin’ around, where are ya?” The man is about to pass underneath the beam where Peter is crouching. She thinks that Daredevil is watching Peter, waiting for him to make the first move. Peter holds up three gloved fingers: a countdown.

_Three…_

_Two…_

_One…_

“Don’t tell me ya got your fuckin’ ass lost agai _aaaaaargh!”_

Peter jumps, and Daredevil springs into action. A sticky ball of webbing hits the man in the face; as he whirls and staggers around, Peter nails him with another in the back, and then Daredevil is there, slamming a fist into his jaw in a vicious uppercut. Michelle swears she actually sees the man’s feet lift off the floor before he goes down hard on his back.

“HEY!”

“Shit, fuck, there’s two of ‘em!”

More footsteps thunder across the church floor as the man’s buddies realise what’s happening and, instead of running _away_ from the superheroes like any bad guys with sense, they run directly towards the new threat. A gunshot rings out, and Michelle’s heart stops as she sees Daredevil stagger, but in the next second the gun is spinning across the floor, snatched and flung away by one of Peter’s webs.

Peter jumps into the air, almost six feet straight up, pivots and kicks Daredevil’s attacker in the back of the head. He lands in a crouch, and Daredevil surges forward, meeting the uncoordinated blows from a couple of thugs with a flurry of kicks and punches too fast for Michelle to track.

One goes down, and then the other, and Peter quickly webs up their mouths and hands. Michelle is pretty sure he and Daredevil have never fought together before, or even crossed paths more than a couple of times, yet they seem to work together instinctively, complementing each other with differing displays of acrobatic skill.

“Michelle!” Shona’s urgent voice pulls her away from the rapidly unfolding battle. “Are you okay? Come on – let’s go, quickly, while they’re distracted.”

Michelle shakes herself and refocuses on the task at hand. The door to the kitchens is located at the back of the church. The fastest way to it would be to cut diagonally across the open space, but although Peter and Daredevil are holding their own against the remaining thugs, it’s too risky for them to just run out into the open. They’ll have to hug the walls to try and avoid detection.

She takes a deep breath in, looking from Shona’s worried face to Father Lantom’s drawn, yet calm one, and nods. “Yeah, I’m okay. Let’s move.”

The next few minutes are some of the longest of Michelle’s life, as the three of them make their way as quickly and as quietly as they can around the edges of the church. She can hear the sounds of the fight unfolding so near them, the _thwip_ of spiderwebs and the thud of fists connecting with flesh, yet she can’t let herself be distracted by it – no matter how much she wants to watch and make sure that Peter is okay.

 _He does this all the time, Michelle_ , she reminds herself. _Just because you’re watching now doesn’t mean that this is the time he’s going to –_

She cuts herself off before she can finish that thought.

Miraculously, they make it to the kitchen without incident, though Michelle has to stop and rest more times than she’d like, panting harshly and blinking away tears from the pain in her foot. Once, Father Lantom half-seriously offers to carry her, and the unexpectedness of it almost startles a laugh out of Michelle.

They reach the door to the kitchen, and after glancing around them, Father Lantom knocks twice and then pushes the door open a crack, saying quickly,

“Don’t attack – it’s us – you’re safe – we’ve come to get you out.”

“Father! Oh, thank the _Lord_ ,” comes a heartfelt, hoarse voice, one Michelle feels like she hasn’t heard in an age. George. There’s the clatter of a number of objects being moved away from the door, and then George’s voice again. “Come inside, quickly.”

The three of them half-fall into the kitchen, and Michelle looks around as the door closes behind them. About a dozen people, soup kitchen regulars and volunteers, are huddled inside, armed with various improvised weapons – knives, ladles, pots and pans. A first aid kit lies open on the counter, and next to it –

“Betty!” Michelle croaks, her voice weak with relief.

 _“MJ!”_ Betty pushes her way to the front of the room; Michelle takes a couple of steps and meets her in a tight hug.

“Oh, thank God, thank God, I didn’t know what had happened to you,” Betty is saying. “You were right next to the door – and in the middle of everything I didn’t see where you went. I was helping George, and I knew that we had a first aid kit in here, so I came here, and then we stayed to help the others who had come in.” She grips Michelle by the shoulders and looks her up and down. “Are you hurt?”

“I’ll recover,” Michelle tells her. “The sooner we can get you guys out of here, the better.” She looks at George and the other volunteers, addressing them all quickly and urgently. “Spider-Man and Daredevil are out there right now, fighting with those thugs.”

Betty’s eyes widen at the mention of Spider-Man. Some of the soup kitchen regulars look alarmed, others hopeful. “We need to take this opportunity to get everyone to safety, before things get any worse.”

“Tell us what you need us to do,” says George firmly.

 

Michelle and Betty are in the first group to venture out of the kitchen. George volunteers to go with the second group, with Father Lantom, Shona and the remaining three volunteers bringing up the rear. (Michelle tries strenuously to argue that she should stay behind with the last group, and is unceremoniously shut down by Betty, Shona and George together).

Michelle cautiously cracks the door open and puts her eye to the tiny gap. Everything looks quiet; in fact, she can’t see anyone at all, whether a gang member, superhero, or god forbid, a cop.

Slowly, she pushes open the door and the four of them – Michelle, Betty, another volunteer named Kelly, and John, a homeless former chef who regularly visits the soup kitchen – tiptoe out of the room. Kelly eases the door shut behind them.

They haven’t gone two feet from the door when two things happen at once: an object hurtles through the air towards them, and an even faster red and blue blur appears in front of them and catches the object inches away from John’s face.

“Heya, guys!” Peter greets them cheerily, as John and Kelly gawk in shock at the appearance of a real, live superhero right in front of them. “You guys are-” Peter stretches out a hand to catch another knife, hurled by a red-faced, angry man in a dark leather waistcoat who Michelle can see storming closer. “-soup kitchen volunteers, right? That’s awesome! I’m-” he reaches up to catch another knife, this one in between the third and fourth fingers of his right hand. “-such a big fan of the work you guys do. It’s really important for the city.”

Peter turns his head to shout at the man who’d thrown the knives. “Hey, didn’t your mom ever teach you not to play with sharp objects? You could have hurt somebody!”

He turns back and addresses the small group in an undertone. “You guys should probably get moving. Beware of low-flying missiles!”

With that, he shoots a web up into the rafters and swings away, firing webbing in the direction of his attacker.

John and Kelly stare after him, open-mouthed; Betty catches Michelle’s eye, and puts a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter. Michelle just shakes her head slowly.

“Right, you heard the man,” says Michelle.

“Spider-Man,” Betty puts in.

“We need to move.”

In the same way that Michelle, Shona and Father Lantom had made their way to the kitchen from the side corridor, the four of them steal out of the church, keeping close to the wall and avoiding the combat taking place in the middle. Michelle sees Peter disarm a rangy-looking woman and bind her hands and feet together with webbing; on the other side of the church, Daredevil vaults over one of the fallen motorcycles and begins to use pieces of broken crockery from the floor as weapons, throwing them with deadly precision.

Michelle looks away and focuses on the exit in front of them, so close now. The edges of the huge, wooden church doors – always left open while the soup kitchen is in session – are a splintered mess, and beyond them she can hear a confusion of noise: shouting, the roar of engines getting closer, and sirens.

As they reach the doorway, Michelle looks back over her shoulder and sees Peter land in a crouch, one hand stretched out to the side to steady himself. He straightens up, and the two of them share a lingering glance. Peter nods, before leaping back into the fray to help Daredevil.

Feeling somehow reassured by this, Michelle limps outside to join the others, and allows John to help her down the steps as Betty shouts for a paramedic.

* * *

 

Some time later, Michelle is standing in the shadows under an overhang at the edge of the church, staring at her phone screen.

She had sat on the back step of one of the ambulances, relishing the feeling of having taken the weight off her feet and not caring how long it might take for someone to examine her. She watched the last few people who had been inside the church make it out of the doors, ticking them off her mental list, and eavesdropped on the conversations of passing cops and paramedics for news of anyone who might have been seriously hurt.

She gleaned that three people had been taken to hospital earlier, but there had been no fatalities. Michelle tried to keep herself from mentally replaying her actions from the whole night and wondering if she’d missed anyone lying on the ground, if there’d been anyone who’d needed her help that she hadn’t stopped to notice. She’d been focused on getting herself and Shona out of danger, and she’d done the only thing she could think of at the time, which was to contact Peter.

She didn’t see Peter or Daredevil exiting the church; knowing Daredevil (not that she did, but there was enough video footage online) he’d probably ninja-parkoured up the side of the church, concealed by shadows, while Peter had likely found a hole in the roof to slip out of.

She’d been on the point of texting him, when a paramedic had asked to examine her foot. The next several minutes had been spent trying to remove her sneaker from her swollen foot as gently as possible, and wincing at the sight of her purpling and bruised big toe. The neighbouring toes and the top of her foot also didn’t look too hot, covered in black, grey and greenish bruises.

The paramedic had taped her big toe to its neighbour for support, and tightly bandaged the top of her foot to stabilise it, before recommending that she get it x-rayed at the hospital as soon as possible to check for a break or fracture, and to keep her weight off it in the meantime.

 _Getting a lift from my superhero boyfriend counts as keeping my weight off it, right?_ thinks Michelle wryly. They’d also given her some mild over-the-counter painkillers, which hadn’t made much of a dent.

Betty, who was miraculously unhurt except for a few cuts and scrapes, had insisted on waiting for Michelle until almost all of the other volunteers had been treated and left. Finally, Michelle had persuaded her to take the last cab together with George, Kelly and Denise, another volunteer.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m getting a lift,” Michelle told her, raising her eyebrows meaningfully.

Comprehension dawned on Betty’s face, and she glanced towards the roof of the church before giving Michelle a small smile. “Okay. Call me in the morning, all right?”

“I promise,” Michelle replied, managing a smile of her own.

Now, she runs her thumb over the screen of her phone and types,

Where are you? I’m

Just as she’s debating how best to describe her current location, her phone suddenly buzzes, almost causing her to drop it in surprise.

`**Peter W Parker:** i’m above you`

Michelle blows a strand out of hair out of her face and rolls her eyes. She needs to teach Peter that texting things like that, even to your girlfriend, is kinda creepy.

She looks up, and resolutely doesn’t jump when a red masked face pokes out from above the overhang. “Hi,” Peter says.

“Hi yourself,” Michelle replies. “You gonna crouch there all night, or can we talk at ground level?”

Peter hesitates. “There’s no-one else around, right?”

“Obviously,” Michelle replies, rolling her eyes again. She’s not standing in the darkest spot on the church grounds for fun. Then again, at least Peter is _trying_ to be discreet, which is more than she can say for him and Ned most of the time.

Peter lowers himself down from the roof with one hand, and lands lightly on the ground. “Where did Betty go? Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine – I told her to get a cab with the others. Are you hurt?” Michelle narrows her eyes, zeroing in on the way that Peter is standing ever so slightly hunched over.

Peter stiffens, tries to straighten up, and visibly winces. His suit is looking a little the worse for wear, too – Michelle can see some gashes in his sleeves, though there at least isn’t any blood visible beneath them.

“It’s nothing,” he says hastily. “Just a couple bruised ribs. They’ll be gone by morning – healing factor, remember?”

Michelle huffs out a breath. “Okay, but in the meantime, you’re in no condition to be swinging back to Queens with a passenger,” she points out. She should have known better than to assume that Peter would be up to swinging them both back home after fighting off multiple attackers – and he’d probably been out patrolling earlier, too. “We’ll have to take a cab. Do you have a change of clothes nearby?”

“Uh…”

Peter dons the _I am trying to remember where the hell I left my backpack_ expression that she knows far, far too well. Michelle is trying to get Peter to be more organised about his clothes-stashing (or hell, can’t Tony Stark engineer some kind of special shrinking bag for him to carry?), but it’s an uphill battle.

Michelle sighs and mentally runs through their options. Suddenly, Peter brightens.

“Okay, what if I knew somewhere really close by that we could go and rest up for a bit? I only need an hour or two, then I’ll be fine to swing us both home.”

“And where would that be?” Michelle asks suspiciously.

Peter roots around in some kind of pocket hidden in his costume. “Daredevil gave me this.”

Michelle takes what he hands her, which is a folded-up pamphlet from the church with something about service times on it. On the back is scribbled, almost illegibly, an address.

Michelle squints at it. “Jesus, his handwriting’s awful.” But if she’s reading it right, it’s just a few blocks away.

Michelle bites her lip, debating the wisdom of going to an unknown man’s house in the dead of night. But Daredevil has saved her life multiple times now, and right now, another superhero’s house might be one of the safest places they can go. And it’s only for a couple of hours.

Her throbbing foot makes up her mind for her. “Okay, fine. Let’s go to Daredevil’s place.”

Peter insists that his ribs can handle a short swing, so Michelle wraps her arms around him as carefully as she can, and they take off. Peter already seems to know the quickest route to take to their destination; Michelle shouldn’t be surprised that he somehow knows the area so well. He’s probably been staking it out while she’s at the soup kitchen.

It only takes a few minutes for them to reach the address that Daredevil gave them: a nondescript apartment building in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. Peter lands lightly on the roof, and points to a door a little way away.

“I think that must lead straight down into the apartment.”

“I guess it makes sense for Daredevil to have rooftop access,” Michelle says, disentangling herself from him.

Peter walks towards the edge of the roof. “Okay. You wait there – I’ll climb down the side of the building and check it’s safe.”

“Or we could just knock,” Michelle points out, but Peter has already disappeared over the edge.

Michelle rolls her eyes and wonders what the worst thing that could happen is, considering they’re already on the roof of this guy’s apartment.

“Fuck it,” she mutters, and limps over to knock on the door.

She hears a clatter from inside, as if someone just fumbled a plate or a mug. “Who’s there?” calls a man’s voice, sounding tense.

Is that Daredevil? His voice sounds completely different.

Michelle clears her throat. “My name is Michelle Jones,” she calls through the door. “I’m… an associate of Spider-Man.” She stops short of introducing herself as “Spider-Man’s girlfriend” because it feels a bit childish for a first introduction. She hopes that Peter won’t be offended, if he overheard.

“Oh, shit-” There’s another clatter and the sound of footsteps approaching rapidly, and the door to the apartment swings open to reveal a blond man on the other side, brushing long hair out of his face. “Hi. Matt said that you might come by.”

Michelle frowns slightly as she deduces several things in rapid succession: one, this guy’s build is all wrong for Daredevil, which means that two, this must be his partner, and three, Daredevil’s name is apparently Matt.

Michelle sticks her hand out for the man to shake. “Michelle Jones,” she says formally. The man’s lips quirk upwards in amusement, but he gamely shakes her hand.

“Foggy Nelson, nice to meet you,” he says. “Why don’t you come in? Is, uh, Spider-Man with you?”

Michelle steps inside, wincing as she leans too heavily on her bandaged foot.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry, you’re hurt! Uh, you can use me as an arm rest if it’s not too weird?”

Michelle smiles slightly and accepts the help. She’s extremely good at reading people thanks to years of observing them, and she doesn’t detect any malice from this man whatsoever. He radiates sincerity and genuine kindness; in her mind, she tries to picture him next to the looming, growling figure of Daredevil, and boggles at the contrast.

But then, most people think that she and Peter seem like an odd match, so she should know better than to judge from the outside.

The two of them hobble down the stairs together, with Foggy narrating things like, “Halfway there… A few more steps to go… We’re almost at the bottom.” He sounds almost as though he does it out of habit.

Finally, they reach the bottom, and Michelle leans gratefully against a wall, looking around a small and sparsely furnished, but welcoming, living space. “Spider-Man’s outside. He should be at the window, I think,” Michelle tells Foggy.

Foggy looks around, and _almost_ manages not to jump as he spots Peter outside one of the windows, clinging to the side of the building and waving with his free hand. He mutters something that sounds like “ _Superheroes_ , Jesus,” and Michelle suppresses a snort.

Foggy hurries over to the window and opens it, and Peter crawls inside and drops down onto the carpet.

“Hi,” he says, straightening up. “Wait, you’re… Are you Daredevil?”

Foggy laughs and shakes his head. “I’m Foggy Nelson, his partner. Nice to meet you.” He and Peter shake hands.

Michelle expects Peter to immediately follow this by taking off his mask, but he doesn’t. Instead he peers around the apartment, his eyepieces doing that weird thing where they expand and contract to adjust to the light levels.

Foggy doesn’t seem fazed by this. “Daredevil should be back before too long.” He turns to Michelle. “Here, let me help you to the sofa-”

“Oh no, I got it,” Peter interrupts, rushing over to her.

Michelle rolls her eyes a little and mutters, “Do not pick me up ‘bridal style’, or I will not speak to you for the rest of the month.”

“I would never!” Peter replies, wounded, as he helps her slowly over to the sofa. In an undertone, he hisses, _“Didn’t I tell you that I was gonna check that it was safe, first?”_

“Oh, we were already on the roof,” Michelle dismisses him as she lowers herself onto the sofa, breathing a sigh of relief as she’s seated again. The bandages make it easier to put weight on her foot, but the stairs were not a fun ride. She has no idea how she managed to walk and even run earlier, but she guesses that adrenaline had a lot to do with it.

(The running might also have something to do with why it hurts so much now).

Foggy watches the two of them with amusement, and no small amount of concern at Michelle’s condition. “Would either of you like some coffee? I was just about to make a pot for myself. And I can get you an ice pack for your foot, Michelle.”

“That would be amazing, if you have one,” Michelle says gratefully. Foggy seems completely at ease having two strange, renegade teenagers – one of them with superpowers – in his apartment, and she wonders just how often things like this happen to him.

“Please,” says Foggy, walking over to the kitchen. “I live with a superhero – we’ve got most of the contents of a hospital in this apartment.”

Peter fusses at Michelle until she agrees to let him unlace her sneaker and ease her foot up onto the coffee table. Okay, that does feel better. She relaxes back into the sofa and vows not to move from this spot for the rest of the night.

 “Coffee, Peter?” Foggy asks, sticking his head out of the kitchen. “And did you want cream and sugar, Michelle?”

“Uh, none for me, thanks,” says Peter. “Caffeine does weird things to me.”

“Yeah, and he’s weird enough already without it,” Michelle adds, and Foggy chuckles. “Just a little bit of cream for me, thanks.”

Peter gives her a look that would probably be wounded if she could see his face underneath the mask. Michelle taps him on the forehead. “Take this off,” she hisses.

Peter shakes his head, but before she can ask him what his deal is, Foggy walks back in with two mugs of coffee and a medical ice pack.

“Here you go,” he says, handing one of the mugs to her and setting the other one down on the coffee table. “You’ll want to go easy with the ice pack,” he adds, proffering it. “Keep it on for ten minutes at a time, every hour. Even if it’s tempting to use it more often.”

“Honestly, I’m just glad to have it at all,” says Michelle, reaching for it with her free hand, but Peter gets there first.

“It’s easier for me to do it from this angle,” he says when she raises an eyebrow, bending forward to press it against her foot.

Michelle is amused at him being so solicitous, but that’s Peter all over, really. She shrugs and sits back, sighing at the relief the ice pack brings to her swollen foot.

The three of them sit in silence for a moment, Foggy in the armchair, and Michelle and Peter on the sofa. Michelle mentally hunts around for topics of conversation, but can’t think of anything other than, ‘So, what’s it like to be in a relationship with Daredevil?’

Peter sitting next to her in full superhero garb doesn’t help with the awkwardness. Maybe he’s just being cautious, but she can’t help but think they’ve already crossed some kind of line of familiarity by showing up at this guy’s apartment injured in the dead of night and drinking his coffee. Hell, Michelle has her foot up on his coffee table. What does it matter if he sees Peter’s face?

Finally, Foggy leans forward and breaks the silence.

“You know, I’m sure it’s none of my business,” he begins carefully, looking at Michelle. “But you seem quite… young. Are you, uh…” He looks between her and Peter. “How old-?”

Peter and Michelle are saved from answering this question by the sound of a door opening somewhere above them. Michelle and Peter both look up, but Foggy doesn’t even bother, calling out,

“Hey, welcome back. Your guests are here.”

“I know,” Daredevil replies gruffly as he descends the stairs in full costume. The horns on his cowl look a lot less intimidating and a lot more dorky indoors under the electric light, and Michelle has to work to keep a smile off her face.

Peter bounds to his feet as if he’s on a spring, all nervous energy. “Hey, Daredevil! Thanks for inviting us to your place.”

Daredevil inclines his head in Peter’s direction. “Thanks for the help earlier.”

“If anything, you were the one who saved our asses,” says Michelle. She waves at him from her reclining position on the sofa. “Hi. Excuse me if I don’t get up, I’m kind of indisposed here.”

Daredevil’s mouth twitches slightly. “You should really sit down as well; you’ve got a cracked rib,” he says to Peter.

“Oh, uh, do I?” Peter says, his voice slightly higher than usual. “I thought it was just bruising. That, uh, that explains a lot, though.”

He sits back down, throwing an undoubtedly guilty glance in Michelle’s direction. Michelle gives him a flat stare, because that’s as much as he deserves right now.

She also wonders how Daredevil knew about Peter’s rib. Can he read minds?

“A cracked _rib_ ,” she says. “And you didn’t _notice?_ Did this happen when you were swinging me over?”

“Um, it might not have done?”

Daredevil – Matt, Michelle supposes – walks over to greet Foggy with a kiss, and Foggy tugs on the cowl that his partner is still wearing.

“You gonna take this off now that you’re inside? Because I gotta say, it does not have the same impact in the light.”

“So you’ve told me,” Daredevil says, but he doesn’t move to take off the cowl.

Michelle is beginning to see a pattern developing here. She looks from the fully-costumed Daredevil to her fully-costumed boyfriend, and then at Foggy, raising her eyebrows.

Foggy is having none of it. “No, Matt, I am not going to talk to your masked face all night long. You can take off the helmet; you’re in safe company here.”

Michelle takes the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon, and nudges Peter. “That goes for you too, Spider-boy. Mask off, c’mon.”

Peter hesitates, looking over at Daredevil, who is folding his arms, the corners of his mouth turned down.

“Foggy, what’s the point of having a secret identity if I go around showing my face to strangers? No offence,” he adds in Peter and Michelle’s direction, as an afterthought.

“No, he’s right,” Peter says earnestly to Michelle. “You’re always telling me I should be more careful with my identity.”

“You invited them to our apartment, Matt!” Foggy is exclaiming in exasperation. “Which I am happy about, of course I am, but you can’t suddenly draw the line in front of taking off your mask. What difference does it make, at this point?”

“Not to _other members of the superhero community_ ,” Michelle says to Peter. “Tony Stark knows who you are.”

“Mr. Stark found out! I didn’t _tell_ him.”

“It matters,” Matt is saying stubbornly to Foggy. “You know why.”

Peter wilts under Michelle’s gaze, and looks at Daredevil again. “If he takes off his mask, then I will too,” he says eventually.

Daredevil smirks a little. “Kid, whether you have your mask on or off makes no difference to me whatsoever.”

Michelle and Peter both stare blankly at Daredevil. Michelle’s going all in on the ‘psychic’ theory at this point, because she has no idea how else Daredevil would know about Peter’s age, unless he’s just inferring from how young Michelle looks. (The “Mr. Stark” thing might also be a bit of a giveaway).

Foggy is shaking his head. “Look, you can’t go making comments like that and then keep trying to hide it; it doesn’t work that way,” he says, cryptically. “All right, on the count of three, both of you are taking off your masks. Okay? One… Two…”

On ‘three’, first Peter and then Daredevil reluctantly reach up to draw their masks off their heads. Peter squares his shoulders as he holds his limp mask in his lap. He has some faint bruising on his jaw, and Michelle reaches out to touch it, frowning at him. She hears Foggy draw in a breath.

“Wow, you… You _are_ young.”

Michelle looks over, and takes in Daredevil’s features for the first time as she does so. He’s cute, she won’t deny that, with wide eyes and dark brown hair that’s standing up in tufts everywhere, a slight pout on his face like Foggy has sent him to his room without any dinner. Looking from Matt to Peter, she can’t help remarking,

“Really? _Another_ puppy-faced superhero?”

Foggy bursts out laughing, and it doesn’t help that Peter’s face immediately crumples into the most wounded expression she can imagine. “Hey!”

“I always told Matt he looked a bit like a duck,” Foggy says to Michelle, who snorts with amusement. “A wounded, handsome duck.”

Daredevil – _Matt_ – is smiling slightly, obviously used to the teasing. “Matthew Murdock,” he says to Peter, holding out his hand. Peter jumps up to shake it. “But you can call me Matt. Nice to ‘meet’ you.”

“Peter Parker,” says Peter. “Aka Spider-Man. Nice to meet you too, uh, as you.”

Matt nods and smiles, but his eyes don’t really meet Peter’s, still gazing somewhere over his shoulder, and the pieces suddenly fall into place for Michelle, far later than they should have done.

“When you said that it didn’t make a difference to you whether Peter has his mask on or off…” she begins, uncertainly.

“It’s because I’m blind, yes,” says Matt, nodding. He turns his head towards Foggy as if to say, _There, are you happy now?_

“I am ecstatic, buddy,” says Foggy, taking the cowl from Matt’s hands. Michelle’s still not sure that the two of them don’t share a mind-link. “Do you wanna change into something a little more comfortable? I can entertain our guests. Peter, we probably have some clothes of Matt’s that you can wear, too. And we should definitely wrap those ribs.”

Peter, though, is staring intently at Matt.  
  
“So do you have super hearing?” he asks. “Which is how you knew that I had a cracked rib... And how you could tell that I’m a kid.”

Matt inclines his head. “All of my remaining senses are enhanced,” he says. “So yes, I have super hearing – and touch, smell, and taste. I can sense things like air currents and changes in pressure, which tells me where things are in space.”

Peter’s eyes are so round, Michelle is sure they’re going to fall out of his head.

“And yes, I’m used to identifying people by their voices – well, and their heartbeat,” Matt adds, with a quirk of his lips. “Your suit modifies your voice a little, but you have certain verbal tics that give away your age. I’m sensitive to these things in a way that most people aren’t.”

“Woah,” Peter breathes, completely blown away by this information. Michelle has to admit she’s intrigued as well. It also explains how Daredevil knew to come to their aid in the alley, all those weeks ago. The sound of her attack alarm must have been like a foghorn to him.

“Wait… what about in the church, earlier?” Peter asks, his brow furrowing. “When I was up on the roof beam – I did a countdown from three, and you saw it! Or – I thought you did. How did you know when to go?”

Matt’s lips twitch up even more. “You were counting under your breath.”

“Oh, man.” Peter flops back into the couch and covers his face with his hands. “I was, too. That’s embarrassing.”

Matt leaves to change out of his costume, and Michelle thinks back to how Daredevil had fought in the church, attacking and blocking and moving with unerring precision, as if he knew where each blow would land before the other person had even started to move. She isn’t sure whether Matt being blind explains everything, or makes it ten times more baffling.

Thinking about the church threatens to pull her mind down the dark path of reliving everything that happened earlier, so she shakes herself and pulls out her phone instead, thinking about texting Betty.

She does a double-take when she sees five missed calls from `**Home**`. _Crap. Evie._

“Uh, I need to make a call,” Michelle says, just as Foggy comes over with an armful of clothes for Peter to try on for size.

Peter jumps up to take the pile from Foggy, looking quizzically at Michelle. She shows him the phone screen, and he blanches.

“Sure, you wanna go up to the roo- ah.” Foggy screws up his face, putting a hand to his forehead. “Sorry. Forget I said that. You want some help out into the kitchen?”

“That would be cool, thanks,” says Michelle.

“Do you need me to come with, MJ?” asks Peter, looking anxious on her behalf. Michelle gives him a quick smile.

“It’s just Evie. I can handle her, I promise.”

Foggy gives her a hand up from the couch, and supports her as they hobble over to the kitchen.

“Is your, uh… mom worried?” he asks, inclining his head towards her phone.

“Sister,” Michelle replies. “She’ll be fine, I just need to… talk her down a bit, probably.”

“I get that,” says Foggy, helping Michelle ease her weight back until she’s leaning against the counter. “Good luck, and yell when you need a return lift.”

Alone in the kitchen, Michelle takes a deep breath and hits 1 on her speed dial. Evie picks up almost before the first ring has completed. “Michelle Elizabeth Jones! _Where are you?!”_

“Hey, Evie.”

“What in the hell _happened?_ When you didn’t text to say you were on your way home, I thought maybe you just forgot, but then I heard on the news that the soup kitchen was _attacked?_ By some kind of _motorcycle gang?_ So then I called the contact number you gave me for the church, but he told me that you’d gone home after being treated by paramedics for a broken foot or something? Which, unless you were using some unknown alternative definition of ‘home’, was a fucking _lie._ So just where are you, and when are you coming home so that I can kick your ass?”

Michelle takes a minute to dwell on the irony of Evie being the one stuck worrying at home while Michelle is out late, when usually it’s the other way around. But she knows this isn’t the same at all, and even if it had been, that wouldn’t make it okay.

“I’m with Peter,” she says truthfully. “My b- my boyfriend.” Evie knows, or has guessed, about the relationship between her and Peter, but Michelle has never actually articulated it out loud to her, much less over the phone. It feels strange, and yet not as strange as it should. “His place was closer, and we needed to get somewhere that I could rest my foot. I’m sorry I didn’t call you. It…” Michelle tries to think back, wondering how the notion that Evie might be worrying about her never entered her head.

“There was a lot happening,” she says, finally.

She gives Evie an abridged version of the events in the church, glossing over most of the action and focusing on the fact that she was too busy helping other people out of the church and then being treated for her injury to call home. At first, she hesitates over mentioning Spider-Man or Daredevil, but then reasons that they must have been talked about in at least a few of the news reports – so it would be more suspicious if she didn’t mention them showing up.

“Daredevil _and_ Spider-Man showed up?” asks Evie. “The same Spider-Man that rescued your Decathlon buddies in Washington?”

“The very same,” Michelle confirms, keeping her voice as neutral as possible.

“Do you have, like, a superhero homing signal on you or something?”

Michelle snorts with laughter, because it’s more true than Evie could know. “I think that’s just what superheroes do, Eve, they help people who are in trouble.”

“Mmmhmmm. And _you_ keep getting into trouble.”

Michelle winces, waiting for Evie to issue an ultimatum like forbidding her from helping out at the soup kitchen any more, or giving her a stricter curfew. It would be hypocritical of her party-loving older sister, who has been known to stay out all night without a word, only to finally stumble home the next morning, stinking of alcohol, cigarettes, or weed. But Michelle’s not sure if she has the energy to fight over it right now.

She glances at the clock on the microwave, which reads just gone midnight. It feels so much later than that.

Evie just sighs, long and heavy, down the line. “All right. Get some rest, ice your foot, and call me in the morning.”

“I will,” Michelle promises. She’ll hesitates. “And you’ll talk to…”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to him.”

Michelle lets out a breath. “Thanks, Evie. G’night.”

“Night, Shelly.”

Her sister hangs up before Michelle can protest the use of her childhood nickname. Michelle pulls a face at her phone screen, but then reflects that she’d gotten off lightly, really.

She hobbles to the door of the kitchen because she feels weird about yelling for Foggy to come and get her. Her foot is still mostly numb from the ice pack, so it doesn’t hurt as much as it could.

She is greeted by what she imagines must be a familiar scene at Casa de Daredevil: Matt and Foggy facing off against each other in the living room, Matt with his arms folded, Foggy holding a first aid kit and looking belligerent.

“Matthew,” says Foggy, sternly.

“Foggy,” Matt replies, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“For the second time, get on the damn sofa and let me treat your injuries. Just because there’s no visible bleeding doesn’t mean you can’t be injured. You _cracked three ribs_ a week ago!”

“Yes, a week ago,” says Matt. “They’re all but healed now, and the rest is just bruising. I’m fine.”

“It’s never ‘just bruising’ with you. You were in a fist fight with half a dozen gang members, Matt! With knives! And motorcycles! You are _not_ fine.”

“Would I lie to you, Foggy?”

“When it comes to your own health? Yes, absolutely,” Foggy shoots back immediately.

Partway through this exchange, Peter shuffles out of the bathroom behind them, carrying his Spidey suit and the rest of the clothes that Foggy gave him to try on. He’s wearing a long-sleeved polo shirt that’s just a little too big, the cuffs half-covering his hands, and soft-looking sweatpants that pool around his socked feet. When he sees Michelle, his face lights up like the sun, and Michelle swallows hard and has to grab onto the door frame before her knees give out on her.

She’s building up a pretty good resistance to her boyfriend’s ridiculous puppy-dog charms, but every now and then, he catches her off-guard.

“What are we talking about?” asks Peter as he crosses the room to help Michelle to the sofa.

“Oh, just Matt’s complete and utter disregard for his own well-being,” Foggy says breezily. “Shit, Michelle, I didn’t see you there, sorry. You should take the armchair.”

“No big deal,” says Michelle easily. She kind of enjoys watching the two of them interact. It’s nice to know she’s not the only one with a self-sacrificing idiot for a boyfriend.

Foggy turns his attention to Peter, who he obviously thinks will be a more biddable patient. “Peter, shall I wrap your ribs for you? I promise you I’m trained – well, no medical degree, but I’ve taken several first aid courses. And I’ve had plenty of opportunities to practice.”

“Oh, uh, I’m okay, really, thanks all the same, Mr. Nelson,” says Peter, darting a look at Matt as he helps Michelle ease her foot up onto the coffee table again.

“Say what?” Michelle asks him, dangerously.

Foggy throws up his free hand, the one not holding the first aid kit. “First of all, please, call me Foggy. Second of all, I give up! Apparently broken bones and fractured ribs just don’t exist in the land of superheroes. Medical attention’s just for us mortals, right?”

“No, it’s not that, I promise,” Peter says earnestly. “But one of my powers is that I have an accelerated healing factor. My rib’s probably already started to mend. I wouldn’t want to waste your time.”

Foggy frowns. “Matt?” he asks, for confirmation of this.

Matt tilts his head towards Peter in an ear-first sort of way, apparently listening for… something. (Do bones make noises?) After a minute his eyebrows raise, and he nods.

“He’s right – his rib’s already healing,” he says. “But it’ll still heal quicker, and more effectively, if you wrap it with a support bandage.”

Peter’s shoulders slump slightly as he realises that he’s been out-argued. “Okay,” he says, going to sit down on the couch.

After a second, Michelle sees a slow smile begin to cross his face. Unfortunately for Matt, he isn’t able to spot the danger – until it’s too late.

“You know, I’m surprised _your_ ribs are still okay, Matt,” Peter muses in an overly innocent tone of voice. “Considering that fall you took when you were wrestling with one of the gang members. And you landed pretty hard on your shoulder, too.”

“ _Matthew Michael Murdock!_ Couch, _now!”_

 _“Et tu, Brute?”_ Matt exclaims indignantly to Peter.

Peter throws back his head and laughs and laughs, his face open and happy, looking more carefree than Michelle has seen him in months.

She doesn’t even try to suppress the answering soft smile on her own face.

Matt reluctantly sits down on the couch next to Peter, who scoots up to give him room, and immediately begins to bombard him with questions. “So like, with your hearing, what kind of radius do you get with it? I guess you can hear body noises really well, but what about stuff from far away? How far does the heartbeat thing extend? Did you have to train to like, hone your senses?”

As Matt begins to answer, Foggy perches on the arm of the armchair and speaks quietly to Michelle, rummaging through the first aid kit. “Why do I get the feeling that these two are going to wind up encouraging each other’s worst tendencies?”

Michelle looks up at Foggy and tilts her head in mock confusion, her expression completely deadpan. “I have no idea. What makes you say that?”

Foggy laughs. “Maybe you and I should keep in touch.”

Michelle looks at her phone, which she’s still holding in her lap, and holds it out to Foggy. “Want to trade numbers?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warnings:** Warning for gun violence, non-serious bodily harm, and fight scenes - though nothing out of the ordinary for the MCU. Also, if you're a medical professional, warning for a very ill-informed description of treating possibly broken bones. I admit, I sort of handwaved the medical stuff.
> 
> The scene in Matt and Foggy's apartment where Matt is reluctant to take off his mask was heavily inspired by the wonderful [Say You Don't Know Me (or Recognize My Face)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11286327/) by ShowMeAHero, in which the Defenders are introduced to Matt Murdock (as opposed to his Daredevil persona) for the first time. It's adorable, hilarious and one of my favourite Daredevil fics.


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